Share something interesting that happened to you as a kid =)

[Flatline]

When I was 12 yo, and Pepsi was still sold in bottles, I open one then took a swig and noticed something weird I then looked at the bottle and moved my tongue around in my mouth and discovered there was glass 50% in the bottle and my mouth was full of glass my mom about freaked when I spat in the empty sink where she was drying dishes and saw nothing but glass come out... Good thing I didn't swallow right away damn....

[lost-in-nj]

1. When I was 12, my friends and I

rode our bikes to the gas station to fill our tires with air

they looked liked this




the parking lot was made of pebbles, not paved

any way
my bike slid out from under me and I slid on the rocks....

my knees were shredded and to this day.....

I have a pebble in my left knee......


a little black spot

that is noticable


lost

[Flatline]

3. OUCH!!!!!!!

glad you didn't hit your head..

[no name no slogan]

2. I was in a tornado when I was two

It is also my earliest memory. I got hit by a tree, and ended up in the hospital for a couple days with a concussion. Since then I've been a little edgy when the sky gets green...

[Flatline]

4. I would too

I have only seen a tornado close 3 times and I have total respect for those things..

[MonkeyFunk]

5. we used to dig in the yard all the time

and we'd break up the ground with a pitchfork. When I was about 8 or 9, I grabbed the pitchfork, thrust it into the ground and found myself pinned. I had put it right through my shoe.

I was terrified and pulled it out and ran into my mother. She took off the shoe and sock, and the tine had gone right between my big toe and it's adjacent little piggie. I had slight scratches on each toe.

[Flatline]

6. Damn I foot twitched after reading that.....n/t

[yellowcanine]

7. I was a passenger on a school bus which lost its brakes going down a mountain.

The road was a little winding but the driver managed to keep it on the road. At the bottom of the mountain was a T intersection. The bus went straight through, bounced a little, and rolled to a stop in the middle of a muddy field.
No injuries but a bunch of scared kids. The bus driver lost his job, as he knew the brakes were iffy before he headed down the mountain.

[Flatline]

8. I could only imagine what was going through your mind......n/t

[yellowcanine]

11. I can't remember anything that was going through my mind exept being mighty pissed at that bus

driver for taking a chance like that with a bunch of kids on the bus. He had stopped the bus at the top of the mountain using the emergency brake. That is how we knew he was aware the brakes were not working properly.

[Flatline]

13. I'm just glad your here now to tell about it =)

[malta blue]

9. I used to do commercials....

I lived in the Dominican Republic when I was 7 and 8.

I was a blond kid who was fluent in spanish, which was not very common in the 1970's.

My cousin Charlotte did a milk commercial and her mom turned the agent on to me, so the two of us ended up in a kids shampoo commercial. It was great until I walked across the street from my house into a salon and told them to cut off my hair - and they did. :wow:

Boy was my mom pissed :mad::mad:

[Flatline]

10. How does that help a shampoo commercial? lol

[malta blue]

12. what kind of hairdresser listens to a kid wandering

in alone?

:rofl:

[knitter4democracy]

14. One time, I actually won at hide-and-seek.

My stepbrother Dan was the best there ever was (ended up in the special forces in the Navy, which fit). He always found me and our cousins, even when we played outside in the woods in the dark. One day, I decided to try climbing to the top of my favorite cherry tree not far from the house. He looked and looked for ages while I stayed really quiet up above him. An hour later, I came down (nice day, was enjoying myself, and I wanted to make sure I'd won), and he was really pissed. :)

Oh, and one time, my pony got spooked and bucked me off while we were going across the combined corn field to the back of my mom's house. My foot got stuck in the stirrup, so she dragged me halfway across that damn field at full gallop while I tried to get my boot loose. Dumb pony.

[Flatline]

15. The moments of childhood I tell ya ....n/t

[DarkTirade]

16. One of my exes used to ride horses when she was younger

and she had a similar spooked horse experience. Ended up breaking two of her toes getting off the damn thing. The weird thing was... it was the outside and inside toes on one foot. None of the middle ones were even bruised. :P

[DarkTirade]

17. Well, I had a near-death experience at a fairly young age.

My brother and I for whatever reason didn't own a ball at the time. So instead, we were playing catch with his Darth Vader helmet.

We were tossing it back and forth across the pool at our apartment complex.

He tossed it a little short. I leaned over to grab it... and *ploosh*. In I went. Sunk like a rock, right to the bottom. And I didn't know how to swim very well at the time.

So I just sat there, looking around. Thinking, "This is pretty nifty." Next thing I knew, the lifeguard scooped me up and I'd only been under a few seconds. But it sure as hell felt a lot longer. I was told I was spluttering and crying when I came up, but all I remember is sitting there on the bottom, looking around.

The next few years I had kind of a mixed love/hate relationship with water. :) I was afraid to go underwater again... but I REALLY wanted to. But my curiosity overcame my fear, and I forced myself to learn to swim properly. By the time I was in high school I could traverse an entire width of an olympic sized pool in one breath.

[MonkeyFunk]

18. Oh, I remembered another one

this one time, I found an alien. I brought him home and hid him in my closet. He scared my sister.

I had to hide him from Mom. Then these big guys with keys came and tried to take him away, but we escaped and I helped him get home.

[northzax]

21. lemme guess

you escaped on your bike?

[MonkeyFunk]

30. HOW DID YOU KNOW?!

[northzax]

31. can you start fires, too?

cause that would be awesome

[MonkeyFunk]

32. No

but my sister can.

[northzax]

54. Dude, I hope I am not being too forward

but your sister is smoking hot.

[Flaxbee]

19. all the interesting things seem to involve pain!

poor kids.

I lost the top third of my right middle finger, I was probably about 2. Toddled after my mom, who didn't see me stick my hand in the hinge side of the door and when she closed it, snipped my finger off. Got to the emergency room in time for them to sew it back on, though. Looks fine, but different from the other index finger, that's for sure. A bit shorter. Also don't have much feeling in it.

And this is a weird memory, but it is just clear as day. I don't know if it was a dream or not, though. We'd just moved to a new house, and I was hanging around, checking the place out while my mom planted flowers around the side. I remember running into a man who was in our yard and he tried to grab me; I screamed and he took off as my mom came running around the house. I think it was a dream because no one else remembers it (I was probably 7 years old), but then again, my mother AND my sister both forgot that my sister's boyfriend ran over her foot and broke it. They FORGOT. So maybe it wasn't a dream. :shrug:

[triguy46]

20. I won the school science fair...

but my dad did the project. Went to the city (kansas city) science fair, with 5th grade teacher and was unable to answer any question about what I presented. Shit. What a dork.

[zabet]

22. Hippety-hops.

'nuff said.

[martymar64]

23. I was raped/molested by a teenage boy down the street when I was 8

And as a result, gay guys creep me the fuck out, even to this day. Every one I see brings a flood of terrifying memories back to the front of my mind. I can't even stand for people to touch me, even at the age of 43. That motherfucker ruined my life before it could even begin.
Does that count as interesting?
I'm sorry if that offends some people but it is what it is.


Fuck, now just thinking about it is making me depressed! Godammit!

[Muttocracy]

28. that's so unfair and sad. please find someone to talk to, OK?

[Flaxbee]

41. I'm sorry. How horrible

What is offensive is what happened to you. If you haven't ever talked to a counselor/therapist, please do. No one should have the power to affect / "ruin" your life like that.

[amitten]

45. I am so so sorry to hear that.

I can't believe how you must have suffered all these years. I think child molestation is the very worst of crimes.

I hope you've talked with a professional and know it wasn't your fault.

I also hope you know that being touched by someone who cares for you can be a soothing and healing and gentle and wonderful thing.

[MonkeyFunk]

47. Sorry you went through that

but pedophile rapists should creep you out, not gay men.

[unpossibles]

56. thank you nt

[u4ic]

24. I locked myself in the car when I was 3

kicked it into reverse and almost ran my brother down. :D

[izzybeans]

25. My dad asked to have Brooks Robinson autograph my baseball glove

and he jumped in a trash can.

Funny guy. I was too young to know who he was.

[BlueDissenter]

26. When I was five.......

I went down a slide with a long curtain rod in my hand. I cut my lip, chipped a tooth and shattered the roof of my mouth. I can remember being taken to the family doctor before being rushed over to the ER by my mom. I got a Barbie out of it, though.

[Roon]

27. I was five years old

We were visiting some friends that lived on a farm and I was running through the cornfield having a grand old time. I heard a rattlesnake and I looked down and saw his tail shaking his rattle.Now, mind you, I never heard of rattle snakes but my natural instinct told me that this wasn't good and I did an about face and ran out of the cornfield.

I was recently fitted with hearing aids and if it wasn't for those hearing aids, I probably would have never heard the rattle snake and got bit.

[momophile]

29. when I was five..........

I stood behind the neighbor girl (much bigger) as she was batting and I was saying something to the affect of, "you're not gonna hit it." She swung to hit the ball and knocked me to the ground. A trip in an ambulance and thirteen stitches and a scar to this day.

[Rabrrrrrr]

33. Walking on the moon.

(inside joke - Midlo, please check in)

[Inchworm]

34. We lived very near a Cargill depot along a train track

I jumped into a car full of corn and nearly drowned in the stuff by the time I could get to the side. I think that thrill was sought for many years after.

:hi:

[mwdem]

35. Sunday, after church, i was about 6 years old, and my older brother

thinks it would be cool to spin around as fast as you can, which I did, hitting my chin on the wooden arm of the sofa, and ripping it open. My dad whisked me up in his best white Sunday shirt, and went into the bathroom. I'll always remember seeing all the blood on his shirt. Yes, I went to the hospital and had 8 stitches in my chin. But I'll always remember my dad's concerned look on his face and all the blood on his shirt.

[Rabrrrrrr]

36. I threw a rock in a fire once when camping, age 7 or so, and it blew up and hit me

I can only assume it had water in it - I threw it in the fire, and walked away - a second later, I heard sizzling and a pop/crack sound, and then something hit hard in the back.

I don't know for sure if it was that rock, but I'm pretty damned sure it was.

Probably had the only DNA from outer space visitors in the world, too. And I burned it up.

[Sequoia]

60. Guess that fire didn't like you.

[Rabrrrrrr]

37. I was hit and run over by a semi truck. That did a lot of damage.

Thankfully, all the damage got healed up and I was walking in a few months, running in a few more. I have one leg about a half inch longer than the other one, but other than that, and the painful arthritis that will kick in when I get older, I have no lasting anything from that accident. Well, I don't like - hate, actually - being near semis, ESPECIALLY if I'm not in a car. But other than that, I mean. When I lived in NYC I often had to walk by semis that were unloading - which meant walking IN FRONT OF the cab. I would either run past it as fast as I could, or more often, move across the street. I'm absolutely terrified to stand in front of a semi. I have to be tens of feet away.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

38. The one radio in out house went kablooie, and I assembled one from vacuum tubes.

That was THE radio my folks listened to for years. It wasn't even in a box -- just a metal chassis with the glowing tubes for all to see.

[Cabcere]

39. When I was in fifth grade, I got to be on a brochure

for Natural Chimneys, along with the rest of my family. :D (My dad was working there at the time, and they didn't want to have to pay for professional models to come & pose, so my parents, my brother and I got to be on the brochure.) It was really cool, even though a lot of people didn't believe me (the picture was taken from pretty far away, and we were facing away from the camera, so you couldn't really tell it was me unless you knew). :hi:

[GoddessOfGuinness]

40. Intense spiritual development

My parents weren't particularly religious. I had an uncle who was a minister; but they lived on the other side of the country. I was a lonely kid with only a couple of friends; and I was bullied (mostly emotionally) by the "popular" kids. My parents fought a lot, and dad was physically and emotionally abusive.

Music and God gave me another place to focus.

[Moochy]

42. Almost fell off of a ski lift

I was 12, and skiing at Sierra Ski Ranch, back in 1980s The chair lift came up and hit me in the back, so I grabbed for the chair but had gotten up to the first tower, ~ 40 ft up, and was dangling from the chair lift, with one hand behind the side and my ski's dangling.. When the lift operator stopped the chair lift, he bounded over to the first tower, and climbed up the steel ladder, then swung himself over to the chair and lifted me up. Quite the rescue!

Thanks anonymous chair-lift operator! :D

[RushIsRot]

43. My parents went fishing and left me on the bank of the bayou.

They did that often because I had no affinity for fishing. I generally found ways to entertain myself - usually exploring the nearby woods.

Once, a man who lived in a house situated along the bayou saw me, felt something and took me in. He made a blow gun for me out of a portion of bamboo pole plus a sewing needle and some chicken feathers. It had to have been one of the most entertaining days I ever spent. Not to mention, I LEARNED something!

If that sort of thing happened today, he'd probably be arrested on suspicion. My parents would've likely been arrested on charges of juvenile abandonment.

I kinda miss the 50s.

[Heidi]

44. When I was four years old, I ran straight into a barbed wire fence.

For some reason, I thought the land beyond the fence was "tomorrow." All I got for that erroneous assessment was a three-inch-wide gash above my left knee. I still have the scar, but it's bigger now for some reason. :yoiks:

[enigmatic]

46. I got hit by a car when I was 7

Crossing a busy street; I got lucky and only had cuts and bruises. I still think about that every so often how I could have easily died; when I was younger and angry I was pissed I didn't, but know I'm glad I'm still here...

[Heidi]

49. I'm glad you're still here, too.

:)

[enigmatic]

50. .

:hug:

[MnFats]

48. broke through lake ice....twice.

and i mean completely through, my head bobbing on the surface..fortunately I had friends with me to grab my hands and pull me out.
then i had to run a quarter mile to get home in the first instance, and a little less than that to get back to camp and dry clothes in the second...
i guess i'm lucky to still be around....

[ashling]

51. I've got one:

When I was 4 r 5 I was playing with the neighbor kid digging in the dirt around his house with a knife he had. Actually, he was doing all the digging and I asked him to let me see the knife. He tossed it to me and the blade went in to my eye just missing my eyeball. My Dad was home and he drove me probably real fast to his medical clinic where the other doctor sewed me up. I can still remember lying on my mothers lap in the car with a blue wet washcloth on my eye. My dad was one of the 2 doctors in a small town in north Texas (Henrietta, Tx)

[WilliamPitt]

52. When I was ten years old, a man attempted suicide by fire in the front seat of my mother’s car...

One For All
By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Perspective

Sunday 13 February 2005

When I was ten years old, a man attempted suicide by fire in the front seat of my mother’s car. Back then it was me and mom and the cats in a house near Boston College. She was putting herself through law school at night while working various jobs by day, and while we weren’t rolling in material possessions by any means, that car of hers was the other apple of her eye.

It was an MGB convertible, clean white with a black ragtop and trim, the kind of car they simply don’t make anymore. My mother used it as kind of a rolling knapsack; the trunk was filled with her law school textbooks, notes, outlines, along with de-icer, oil, jumper cables and all the different odds and ends needed to keep a California car running and rolling through a New England winter.

The thing could go. Some of my strongest memories of childhood involve the front seat of that car, with a bunch of grocery bags stacked on my lap because the ‘back seat’ was overflowing with books, watching my mother put the gearshift through its paces as she roared up Commonwealth Avenue like something out of a Bond movie.

The man didn’t know any of that. He was too busy drowning in his own life. A severe and undiagnosed manic depressive on the downward plunge of a bipolar swing, addicted to cocaine and alcohol, his experience as a student at Boston College had been transformed into a nightmare. He came down our street that night with a can of gasoline in one hand and a pack of matches in the other, looking for a place to die.

My mother never locked anything. In the years we lived in that house, we got broken into and robbed no less than four times. The funny part is that the thieves always slit a screen and came through a window or something, never realizing they could have just cruised in through the unsecured front door. My mother, even after all that, never locked the house, and never locked the car.

The man with the gasoline came down our street and found the MGB sitting in the driveway with the lock button standing at attention. He opened the door and slid into the seat. Maybe he sat there for a while, watching his breath fog the windows. Finally, he took my mother’s tweed winter coat that was sitting in a ball on the shotgun seat and put it over himself like a shroud. He poured the gasoline and tossed the can onto the floor. He popped a match.

I woke that night to the sound of engines, and saw red and blue lights flashing across the ceiling. My room faced the street, so I jumped up and peered outside. The street outside my house was filled with fire trucks, police cars, and a crowd of neighbors. I saw my mother standing at the front of a knot of people, her breath pluming out into the cold air through the fist she had jammed into her mouth.

The car was in the driveway, on fire from stem to stern. Two firefighters were holding up the back end while a third put the hose to the gas tank underneath. If the thing had blown, it would have lit up the far side of our house and sent those three firemen sailing singed into the puckerbrush. They got it under control in a matter of minutes, however, and soon what had been a jewel of a car sat in the driveway on melted tires, black as a lump of coal and hissing like a scalded cat. The firemen used prybars to open the driver’s side door.

The car was empty.

My mother grabbed one of the firemen by the coat and asked him something. He turned to the car and used the prybar to open the trunk. I watched as he threw a blackened cube onto the lawn, and then another, and then another. A sodden sheaf of singed papers followed. This was all that remained of her law school textbooks, her outlines, her notes, everything she needed for the final exams that were right around the corner.

The only thing to survive the blaze was Black’s Law Dictionary, which wound up sitting in the front entryway of the house, its melted cover smelling like barbecued benzene. By morning, there was nothing left of the car but a blackened spot in the driveway and a few scattered, twisted coins. My mother stayed in bed late that day, her eyes red and blasted from crying as she called around to classmates hoping to get permission to copy their outlines for exams.

One night about a week later, the doorbell rang. My mother opened the door to find a young man standing there in scruffy jeans and a green sweater. She asked what he wanted.

He pulled a hand out of his pocket and pointed to the burned law book sitting on the entryway floor by his feet.

“I’m responsible for this,” he said.

My mother’s bright Irish blue eyes blazed as she summoned him to the kitchen table. She sat him down, wreathed him in smoke from her cigarettes, and got his story.

The rest: http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/021305A.shtml

[Heidi]

53. I love your mother, Will.

Beautiful. :hug:

[UncleSepp]

55. A guy in a Hawaiian shirt with a gun

Me and my mom were coming out of Kmart, and this guy was standing in the parking lot. I was probably four or five. The guy started waving a handgun around. Mom said "Get in and get down" and I knew exactly what she meant. We took off.

I am not sure if it was the same incident or a different incident. I think it is a different time, because the Kmart parking lot thing was daytime and the other one, it was getting dark. Driving with my mom and there was someone following us over the big Mixmaster near Dallas, and he had a gun. Again, it was "Someone's following us with a gun. Get down and stay down." I got on the floor of the car.

There was this tone in my mom's voice that she only used in really important situations, and it was understood that when that tone came out, there was no bullshit.

Later in life, those things would be useful. I had to use the no bullshit tone once, when I got stuck upside down in a crevasse, hanging by my snowboard, with a binding coming loose. Summoning The Tone, I got my friend to come close, lie down, dig in, and pull me out by my ankles.

Another time, I was riding in a truck with a boyfriend at night, when a red dot from either a laser pointer or a laser sight painted his head. I put my hand on the back of his head and said "Get down" in The Tone. He did. There was a prankster who was doing this at night to a lot of people in town. Very annoying.

Then, another time, there was a guy with a gun on the street facing off with some police officers. The first reaction to shots fired by me and my friend was to run for cover and get down. Everyone else sort of stood around and looked at the source of the sound.

I think those experiences were formative, and ultimately, good in that I learned how to deal with sudden crisis calmly.

[1gobluedem]

57. I stuck my arm through a glass storm door

My mother always told us not to shut the storm door with our hands on the glass. I thought she was just being picky about fingerprints. So, one day when I was about ten when I came home there was a note on the table that said my mother was at the neighbor's and to go there. So, I went back out, shut the door with my hand on the glass and stuck my hand right through it. Even though I'm pouring blood, my first thought was "I'm going to get in trouble." So, with blood dripping down my arm I went and found a rock, put it through the hole in the glass, then smeared some dirt and grass on the cut and told my mother I fell down.

Of course, my mother is not an idiot. One look at the sharp glass cut on my wrist, the hand shaped hole in the door, the blood on the steps, sidewalk, and glass was all it took; she looked at me and said "You put your hand through the door, didn't you." I was dumbfounded; was so sure I'd covered my tracks so well. I thought my mother was a genius for figuring it out.

When I was in first grade our car's brakes failed as my mother was pulling out of our driveway. She hit a schoolbus passing on the street. I was furious because three kids on the bus told it for Show and Tell before I could. :mad:

[WinkyDink]

58. Chief Halftown gave me a bowling lesson.

http://www.tvparty.com/losthalftown.html

He was a gentle man, wonderful with children.

[grannylib]

59. I got to meet MLK Jr. and Rev. Ralph Abernathy in the early

'60s, 1963 I believe, when I was just 4 years old; my dad invited Dr. King to be the speaker at a national Lutheran Youth convention in Florida. It was years before I realized what a cool thing it was for my dad to have extended that invitation in those days.

[monmouth]

61. It was the day before my 13th birthday. I used to tap dance in a children's

show in Atlantic City on the Steel Pier. Used to have lunch on the catwalk with Sammy Kaye. Anyway, was at the satellite bus station near the boardwalk waiting to go home to Absecon. This boy came shyly up to me and sat down. We started to talk, said he was from New York. Very sweet but very serious. He asked if I was going to try and stay in the "business." I said I doubted it. He admired my tap shoes and said they were the best because they were Capezzios, Italian made. lol. He said he had just had a birthday party (13 also) in April and relatives from Italy came. Long story short, his bus came first, he got up and said to me "remember me, I'm going to make it big." I honestly didn't doubt him, very focused for a 13 year old. I asked him again what his name was and he said "Alber..., just Al, remember Al." Told me I was very pretty, got on the bus, sat in the right rear and waved good-bye. I hated to see him go, he was so interesting and different than any boy in my universe at the time. I didn't recognize him until many years later when I saw the DVD of "Dog Day Afternoon." True story...

Also, I lived a few blocks from Bruce Springsteen in Freehold, NJ. Remember one time telling him he should get a haircut..lol. He never let me forget that one..